Armchair adventures "SILENT CONQUEST"

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

April 22, 2009

Armchair adventures
Reading the exploits of Vladimir Yarets in “Silent Conquest” (Issue 318 in TheWeek, dated April 8, 2009), stirred the insatiable vagabond in me from its slumber a little. Unfortunately, it was short-lived.

I am a coward in a very broad sense and my nature of procrastination, like in the past, has gotten the better of me this time also.

I hope the guy can write, despite his other disadvantages, and one day he will put his experiences on to paper in the form of his memoirs or whatever you call it.

While wishing him good luck in his pursuit, I urge him to put pen to paper soon, so that my insatiable vagabond can be satisfied, even without having to leave my cosy reading chair to mount a monstrous-looking two-wheel contraption like that. 
Sasanka De Silva, on email

SILENT CONQUEST

It is impossible to get Vladimir Yarets, who has been travelling the world on a motorbike for nine years, to sit down and have a conversation. Not only because the irrepressible 68-year-old from Minsk, Belarus, can’t sit still even for a minute but also because he’s deaf and dumb.  Acting as our interpreter is Angelica Akenteva, manager of the Harley-Davidson shop in Al Khu-wayr, where the traveller is getting his bike serviced. Angelica, an Estonian, scribbles our question in Russian on a piece of paper and shows it to Vladimir, who then replies in sign language.  Angelica appears to understand most of it and conveys his response to us in English. But Vladimir is not helpless without an interpreter. His BMW-650 is covered with stickers and photographs that say it all. He points to a signboard in English that announces his plan of entering the Guinness World Records as the only deaf and dumb individual who has travelled all over the former Soviet Union, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas on a motorcycle. Vladimir’s current trip began in Minsk on May 27, 2000, and he has so far been to 48 countries.  According to a poster on his bike, he logged 2,86,210km till 2008. After reaching Muscat on March 28 from the UAE, he identified himself to some people with the help of his laminated signboards. He then handed over to them the contact details of Angelica, whom he had met recently at a bike show in Dubai.  He had taken her number and let her know that the sultanate would be his next stop. One week later, she could not believe her eyes when he showed up in front of her shop. So are people helpful when he lands up in strange lands? Angelica puts the question to him and relays the answer.  “According to him, 90 per cent of the people in any country are indifferent. But the remaining ten per cent are always helpful.” When it becomes too hard to get contributions to meet his expenses, he plays his guitar to attract people’s attention to his mission.  On being asked where his journey will end, he takes out his map and points to Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. Is that all? He then points to his muscular arms before looking skywards implying that the journey will continue as long as there is strength in his limbs. During his tour of the US, in a small town called Peoria, he met with an accident. “There were 29 fractures in all,” he conveys, showing a mark on his forehead.  He spent seven months in a hospital but once he recovered, he was back on his bike. The first of Vladimir’s many journeys was in 1967, when he went around the former Soviet Union on a bike, that too without a valid licence, according to his web site, www.yarets.com . Apparently, the authorities had denied him a driving licence because of his disability but relented when he approached them again after the trip, armed with reports of his adventure in the local press. If Vladimir’s family thought his passion for travel was a passing fad, they were obviously mistaken.  But he keeps in touch with his two sons whenever he can. “He passed on their phone numbers to me and I told them that their father is in Muscat and in good health,” says Angelica.  Vladimir lost the ability to speak and hear after he had a fall as a one-year-old. He wasn’t outstanding as a student but one subject that fascinated him no end was geography. “I dreamt of seeing different countries,” he says. It was after retiring from his job as a mechanic that he turned to full-time travelling.  He admires Mikhail Gorbachev and believes that it was the former Russian president’s liberalisation initiatives that helped people like him travel abroad freely.  As for Lenin and Stalin, Vladimir conveys his opinion of them with a thumbs down The adventurer has but one regret – China refused him permission to include it in his epic journey.